The Pitmen Painters: A minor triumph to follow Billy Elliot

The Pitmen Painters (Royal National Theatre, Cottesloe)

Lee Hall is the man who wrote Billy Elliot and reminded us of the life-changing possibilities of dance.

Now he has written a play about some working-class men in 1930s Ashington, Northumberland, who attend painting classes, find they're pretty good at it and soon become the toast of the art world and its twittery darlings.

Their lives, too, are changed - although in a more complicated way than in Billy Elliot. You could say that The Pitmen Painters, which is based on a true story, is Billy Elliot on canvas.

It is witty, rather masculine and slightly too romantic about miners.

The real Ashington men painted by night and worked down the pit by day. The one weakness in this show is that we never see the men at the coalface.

I suspect that if it is made into a film - as it surely will be - some pit scenes will have to be added. They would not only accentuate the contrast between art and labour but might also challengesome of Mr Hall's caricatures.

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One character in particular, Jimmy (David Whitaker), is rather too bluntly comic a figure. If we saw him down the mine he might make more sense as a personality.

But this is quibbling. The Pitmen Painters is briskly told, imaginatively staged and has some lovely moments as the Ashington lads encounter some of the absurdities of modern art. Lord knows what they'd have made of today's Turner Prize.

They are taught by art lecturer Robert Lyon (Ian Kelly) who has a nicely selfish trait. A rich art collector (Philippa Wilson) appears to be interested in their work but may have other motives. There is exploitation in art as well as in capitalist coal mines.

When one of the group has a chance to become a professional artist he hesitates, worried that he might not survive without the pit. I'm not sure I entirely believed this moment.

What is depressing about this often warm and beautifully English play is the thought: would a group of young manual labourers today ever plug into art in such a way?

Towards the end one of the miners looks forward to the future (he is speaking in 1947) and says: 'Nebody's ganna be satisfied with just coming off their shift and vegetating - they're all ganna want what we want.'

Alas, this didn't prove to be true.

Plenty of people vegetate and art is still elitist. Come to think of it, a satire about today's Britart amoralists would be welcome, but for the time being we can draw much nostalgic pleasure from The Pitmen Painters.